


A Stitch in Time

by arysteia



Category: X-Factor (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-10-25 05:45:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10757940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arysteia/pseuds/arysteia
Summary: Messing with Rictor is a big mistake.  Messing with time to do it?  Shatterstar's been training for this all his life.





	A Stitch in Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VanaTuivana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanaTuivana/gifts).



> For VanaTuivana. I loved all your prompts, and I really hope you enjoy this attempt to tick off as many as I could.

They're having sex when it happens, possibly the only thing on either Earth _or_ Mojoworld that could have made Shatterstar any angrier than he already is. He's flat on his back, sweat soaked and come smeared and ready to go again, Rictor straddling his waist and squirming delightfully, not quite hard yet but getting there nicely as Shatterstar strokes him, when Rictor gives a sudden gasp that is decidedly _not_ one of pleasure.

"Julio?"

"Oh God, Star," Rictor says, his voice high and shocked, and then he convulses, doubling over, hands going to his abdomen.

Shatterstar sits up, shoves Rictor off him and over the edge of the bed, into the zone of comparative safety between it and the wall, then rolls off the other side, snatching up his swords and staying low, eyes flicking from the door – _still closed_ – to the windows – _intact_ – to the ceiling – _no sign of ninjas or dog soldiers or invading aliens or any other threat_.

There's no one there but them.

Rictor's crying softly now, pain filled sobs that pierce Shatterstar like a blade, and the whole room is starting to shake as he loses control of his powers. Shatterstar drops his swords and dives back over the bed towards him, shunting it out of the way to give himself room to work. He pulls Rictor's hands away from his stomach, but there's no blood, no obvious wound.

Maybe it's just appendicitis, he thinks wildly, trying to summon the memory of distant anatomy lessons when he first arrived on Earth. Human bodies are strange, sub-optimal things, even mutant ones, nothing like his own bio-engineered perfection. Rictor shudders again, still in pain, tries to curl up on himself, and Shatterstar moves to soothe him, comfort him, and –

\- _his fingers pass right through him_.

Rictor chokes, then whispers "I'm so sorry, Star."

Shatterstar pats at him furiously, refusing to accept the evidence of his eyes, but he's fading fast, no substance to him at all, just a shadow, and visibly now too; he's almost _transparent_.

" _Te amo, corazon_ ," Rictor manages, and then he's gone, leaving Shatterstar grasping helplessly at empty air.

* * *

He takes what he means to be a quick shower, just long enough to remove the body fluids he's covered in so that he can get dressed and start finding people to blame and kill, and surprises himself by breaking down, going to his knees and sobbing under the streaming water.

His _uemeur_ is screaming; it knows what he doesn't want to admit, that Rictor is not just missing, he's _gone_. Gone from time, gone from reality, _gone from Shatterstar_. This isn't like every other time they separated, fought, broke up. All those other times, no matter how miserable he was, no matter how alone he felt, he could still feel Rictor in the world. Now he can't.

He breathes deep, at last, reminds himself he's a blood warrior of the Cadre Alliance, a member of X-Force, of X-Factor, that he was destined to defeat Mojo and free his people, that he has defied and transcended everything he was bred and born to be. He is a lover, and a friend, and he has _never_ given up on anything he wanted.

And he has never wanted anything the way he wants Julio back beside him.

He turns off the water, towels himself roughly dry, and goes back to the bedroom to get dressed. There's bits and pieces of several of his old uniforms in the closet; Rictor is sentimental about the past, even if he isn't. He chooses a black and white leather jacket he bought in Madripoor, and a white vest and pants that remind him of the ones he wore when he first came to Earth seeking the X-Men's help in the rebellion against the Spineless Ones. How long ago that seems, and how very young and foolish he'd been.

He buckles up his boots, locks up the house they've been renting, and heads outside. There are people milling in the street, chattering excitedly about the earthquake, how long it had seemed to last but how little damage it had done. That's so typical of Julio, unwilling to the last to be the cause of hurt to innocent bystanders. He nods at their neighbour, Mrs Hampson, talking nineteen to the dozen into her cell phone, and uses the remote control to open the garage.

Rictor's been giving him driving lessons in the new Subaru they bought mostly for appearances' sake while living in this bizarrely friendly suburb, trying to teach him to blend in like a _normal person rather than a lunatic_. It's mostly taken. He'll obey the traffic laws till he's out of the city, anyway.

There's a duffel bag in the back seat full of spare clothes and basic provisions, and another one on the floor full of weapons, Rictor's guns and a variety of knives and throwing blades. They've been on an extended break since returning to Earth from Mojoworld, ignoring the world around them, just _being together_ , but they both knew eventually the time would come when the world came calling and they had to get back into the game.

The GPS says it's three hours' drive to Jamie and Layla's place, but without Rictor to act as an anchor he doesn’t dare to jump. With his emotions as roiled up as they are, Za only knows where he'd wind up. It doesn't really matter; Rictor can't get _more_ non-existent. On the contrary, if his suspicions are correct, the one thing he has plenty of is time. There's no sign of the world changing around him; whatever happened, it was very localised, and aimed at them personally, not the fabric of reality in general.

Rictor has always ridiculed his love of time travel movies, but Shatterstar is a walking, breathing temporal paradox. He came here from the future but he was born in the past; he's his own grandfather; he's at the same time a genetically engineered bio-construct and the child of a loving marriage, a citizen of the Wildways and a human mutant. He needs to know as much as he can about the genre so he can be prepared for any eventuality.

The eventuality that seems to have come to pass is straight out of one of his favourites. Rictor fading and disappearing as he did clearly indicates that someone has gone back into the past in order to change the future. The only question is where and when they went, and what they did there. Okay, that's three questions. Marty McFly had a much easier time of it, never having to leave Hill Valley.

He pulls out the iPhone Rictor gave him for Christmas and thumbs his way into Google while driving one handed. Rictor would be screaming at him to watch the road, but Rictor isn't here. A quick search finds no trace of him, and using the Richter spelling mostly pulls up information about recent earthquakes. He puts away the phone, apologises silently to Julio, and pulls back onto the right side of the road.

He reaches the farm just as the sun is setting. It looks beautiful, everything cast in shades of red and orange, the old house beautifully restored. Jamie has done an excellent job of the repairs. No wonder he's been so keen for them to come out to visit. Shatterstar thinks perhaps he shouldn't have come here to bother them, he should have figured out what he needed to know by himself, but it's too late now; the front door is opening, they must have heard the car coming up the drive.

It's Jamie, and he's clearly nervous, peering into the dusk, but he visibly relaxes when he recognises the car. Shatterstar opens the door and gets out slowly, no sudden moves, and Jamie smiles at him.

"Come in," he calls. "Layla's upstairs putting the baby to bed."

He does so, following Jamie down the hallway to the lounge, taking a seat as instructed, and accepting the drink Jamie presses upon him though he doesn't really want it. They make small talk while they wait for Layla to come back down, idle conversation about the state of politics – still something he cares nothing about – and the place of mutants in the world – precarious as always – and the latest movies they've both seen. It's excruciating.

He glances around the room while Jamie prattles on. There are pictures everywhere, on the walls and on the bookshelves and on the mantle over the fireplace. Most of them are of Jamie and Layla and their son, but there are a few others, candids rather than portraits. There's one of a very young Jamie with Guido Carosella, both of them grinning at the camera, wide eyed and completely ignorant of what the coming years will do to them. There's another of Jamie arm in arm with Theresa Cassidy, and several of different incarnations of X-Factor over the years. Shatterstar is even in a couple of them. Rictor is not.

They both look up as Layla walks into the room. She looks beautiful. And hugely pregnant. He really shouldn't have come. There's no way he can ask her to come with him.

"What's wrong?" she asks, before even saying hello.

"Layla!" Jamie protests, but it's half hearted. Layla may "know stuff", but even he knows the odds of Shatterstar appearing out of the blue for a social call are slim and none.

"Do you remember me?" Shatterstar asks her, cutting right to the chase.

She looks at him strangely. "Of course. What do you mean?"

"From where?"

She obviously decides to humour him. It's probably not the first time a friend or colleague has asked her bizarre questions, with their line of work.

"You're an old friend of Jamie's," she says. "You were a member of X-Factor when I joined. You helped rescue mutants during the Civil War, even though you're not one yourself."

Interesting. "Civil War?"

She looks embarrassed. "That's what Jamie always called it. The fight over Registration."

He nods. As he thought. Not much in the wider world seems to have changed. The programmes on the radio during the drive up had seemed to indicate as much on a more global level too. The same mix of celebrity news and politics, the same old fears and prejudices.

He braces himself. "And do you remember Rictor?"

She frowns. "Who?"

"Julio Esteban Richter. Codename Rictor. He was my friend."

He was so much more, but that was the only word they ever used.

She looks to Jamie uncertainly, but he just shrugs.

"No," she says. "Did I meet him? I'm sorry."

"And you?" he asks, turning to Jamie himself.

"No," Jamie concurs. "Never met him. Should I have?"

"Then how did I come to join X-Factor?" Shatterstar asks calmly, as though this isn't slowly killing him. He joined because Rictor was there. There was no other reason.

Jamie starts frowning too. "You came as a package deal with Rahne and Terry. X-Force alumni. I'd heard a lot of good things about you, over the years, especially the rescuing the 198 thing, and if they said you'd be an asset to the team I was prepared to take their word for it."

"But why did I come back to New York from Mojoworld?" Shatterstar asks. That's what he can't figure out. Without Rictor to draw him home he'd have stayed with the rebellion, finished off Mojo for good.

"Didn't you come to Earth to ask the X-Men for help?"

"Yes," he agrees impatiently. "But that was many years ago. Why did I come back?"

Jamie looks confused. "Look, maybe I'm not the right person to ask. You should try to find one of the girls. I didn't think you ever went back home. Didn't you decide to stay here after the rebellion was defeated?"

"The rebellion was _defeated_?" Shatterstar demands, horrified.

"That's what I always thought," Jamie says carefully. "I didn't ask you about it, it was kind of a sore spot. And I mean... Fair enough. Cable really let you down with that, and I get that you didn't like talking about it."

It makes an awful sort of sense. Earth has barely changed at all. Mojoworld is where the ripples have been felt. And therefore it must be Mojoworld from whence the stone was cast. But where did it land? And when?

"What's this all about?" Layla asks. "What's happened?"

He explains quickly, and it's a sign of the kind of lives they've all led that neither of them look the least bit doubtful. Inter-dimensional assassins being dispatched from the future to go back into his past and prevent him from returning to his homeworld to overthrow a tyrant seems about par for the course, really. The only question is…

"But why did they kill your friend and not you?" Jamie asks.

"Perhaps I was too hard a target." Shatterstar says.

"Or perhaps they thought a lost love would make for better ratings than a noble death," Layla says.

"What?" Jamie and Shatterstar both ask at once.

"Well, Mojo runs the whole place like a reality show, right?" Layla asks.

"Yes," Shatterstar says quietly, wanting to deny it, but knowing that she's right. The thought of Mojo and his fellow Spineless Ones watching him weep for Julio makes him far angrier than any other depravity they've ever visited upon him.

"So rather than kill you," Layla says, "I think they probably thought it'd make better television to break your heart. And if it meant you never came back, then mission accomplished either way."

"Double header," Jamie agrees. "They get to watch you-you, as you are now, grieve, while past-you, for whatever reason, never goes back to fight them."

"That's the only part I don't get," Layla says. "How they knew you'd stay here, rather than channel your grief into anger and go kick their asses twice as hard."

"Because I didn't know to grieve," Shatterstar says, understanding everything all at once. "I didn't know Rictor was dead; who would have told me? All I knew was that he'd promised me he'd come back when I needed him. We were supposed to go to Mojoworld together."

He knows where to look now. There was only one time that he and Rictor were separated for long enough, and he was depressed enough, aimless and confused enough, that he would have just kept waiting. He'd have waited forever; he remembers what it had felt like at the time, fighting Cable's endless war, and waiting for Julio to come back to him. He had eventually, just in time. At least the first time around.

"Can you look up the Richter family?" he asks. "In Guadalajara. I think Rictor's uncle's name was Gonzalo."

Jamie logs in to the big computer in the corner of the room, and Layla perches on the arm of his chair. Shatterstar paces impatiently behind him while he makes the same progress, or lack thereof, that he had made himself.

Finally, he finds what they're looking for. It's an article in a Spanish language paper about the increasing violence in the drug and gun smuggling trade, but it mentions the senseless massacre of an entire family in Guadalajara. The police had no leads, and the case was considered unlikely to be solved, despite the outrage garnered in the community at the deaths of multiple children alongside their elders. Included in the list of the dead is a Julio Richter, aged seventeen.

Well. He knows where he has to go now, and when. And what he has to do when he gets there. This was the hard part. The rest will be easy, by comparison.

He thanks Jamie and Layla for their help, and dismisses their worries as they walk him out onto their front porch.

"Are you sure you can jump through time as well as space?" Jamie asks sceptically. "You've never done it before."

"I've done it before," he says grimly. "Just not anymore. Not in this future."

"But without an anchor?" Layla asks. "You always said you'd get lost in the In Between without someone to guide you."

"There _is_ no one here to guide me," Shatterstar says. "That is exactly the problem."

It doesn't matter anyway. The In Between or here on Earth, without Rictor he's lost either way.

"I could-" Layla starts.

"You cannot," Shatterstar says, even as Jamie reaches for her. "But thank you. I will not forget that you offered."

She nods sadly, and leans into Jamie's embrace, their hands linking over her swollen belly.

Shatterstar walks down into the yard, crosses his swords, and focuses with all his heart and mind and soul on Julio, the truest anchor he's ever known, and the only person he's ever loved.

* * *

It's the first time he's ever made the jump alone, and it's agonising. It's instantaneous and seems to take forever at the same time. Instead of clean white light he's surrounded by an endless grey of uncertainty and sadness, and it's like being underwater almost, the one time Rictor tried to teach him to swim, a heavy weight all around him, pressing down on him, no landmarks, and no real way to know which way is up, or in this case, which way _anything_ is: the past, the future, New York, Guadalajara...

He closes his eyes and thinks instead of Julio at seventeen. Even slimmer than he is now, and slightly shorter. He'd made another inch or two before his bones set, to his great relief and Shatterstar's endless amusement. He'd never understood why Rictor was so preoccupied with the height difference between them. He'd fit perfectly under Shatterstar's chin back then, which to him had seemed the perfect ratio for two people who wished to be as close to each other as physically possible.

There'd been so much he hadn't understood.

No matter. He thinks of young Julio's long hair, and his warm brown eyes, and how angry he'd been all the time, how it had been a victory on par with combat to coax a smile out of him, and how Shatterstar had often been the only one who could do it. How eventually there was a special smile just for him.

The weight lifts, and the air seems to clear, become more breathable. He swallows a mouthful of dust, and coughs as the heavy copper scent of blood fills his nose.

He opens his eyes, and finds himself in the courtyard of the Richter _hacienda_. There's a whole detachment of Imperial Protectorate dog soldiers attacking, screaming women and children fleeing, and men and boys too young for combat attempting to defend them. There are two mangled bodies lying in the yard already, and he makes himself look, but it's Ramon and Omar Richter. No loss then. At least they died bravely, some partial redemption for the disgrace of their lives.

He leaps into the fray, swords flashing, and begins cutting down the remorselessly advancing soldiers from behind. The surviving Richter men figure out quickly enough that he's there to help, and they leave him to it, concentrating on ushering the women and children to safety.

He flings a handful of throwing stars at the dog soldiers closest behind them, decapitates the one nearest him with the outward swing of his extending swords, spreads his arms wide to spear two more on the tips of his blades. Across the courtyard a young man strides back into the melee, even as a woman's voice calls after him to _get in the car, now, Julio_ , and his heart clenches painfully as he recognises him.

Rictor has a gun in each hand and is firing wildly, shooting at the ranks of soldiers now fully concentrating on him. He's too angry, or too inexperienced, to take proper cover, and Shatterstar leaps forward, springboards off a toppled bench seat, and somersaults over the heads of the soldiers to land in front of Rictor.

There's a momentary pause, as the soldiers look surprised, shock registering on their malformed faces, and then Rictor leans around him to open fire again, sensible enough to go low while he goes high, taking them out at the knees while Shatterstar aims for their heads. It's far from a glorious battle, but they operate seamlessly together as they always have, covering each other as they move to mop up the last remnants of the attacking force.

At last there are no more.

Rictor strides towards him, making no move to holster his guns, and demands, "Who the hell are you?"

Shatterstar laughs with the pure glee of it all, and reaches out one hand towards him, swords retracting, and says, unable to help himself, "Come with me if you want to live."

"Are you kidding me, _pendejo_?" Rictor shouts, pointing one of his guns right at him. "Get out of here with that Terminator bullshit. Who _are_ you?"

"I am a friend," Shatterstar says. "Reinforcements will already have been dispatched. We need to leave, before they arrive."

Rictor looks around the yard, at the blood, and the scorch marks, and the bodies of his elder cousins. He doesn't know yet that they were traitors who would later have tried to kill him. Perhaps it's a kindness that he'll now never know.

"I can't leave my family, man," he says desperately. "My uncles can take care of themselves, but my _mother_ is here. And my cousins are just little kids. Are they going to get away okay?"

"They will be in no danger," Shatterstar says. "The Protectorate have locked onto your bio-scans and will follow us if we leave. They will not return here. Your family will be safe."

"Are you sure?" Rictor demands. "No need to send a clean up team?"

"They care nothing for the authorities of Earth," Shatterstar says. It has always been true. "Let's go."

* * *

They leave in Rictor's father's old Mercedes, the last car left in the open garage. It runs perfectly, but young Rictor is not as accomplished a driver as his older self. He keeps turning his head to look behind them instead of using his mirrors, and more than once Shatterstar has to put a steadying hand on the wheel. Rictor shoves him off angrily, but the second time he notices the blood marring Shatterstar's white sleeve.

"Is that yours?" he asks, voice high with panic. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," Shatterstar says.

It's not a particularly deep cut, it will heal within a few hours. It would have healed already if he hadn't expended so much energy making the jump here, and then waded straight into battle without recharging.

"Keep your eyes on the road."

Rictor swerves to miss an oncoming pickup truck, and Shatterstar feels a new sympathy for his patience when dealing with his own lack of attention.

"Where should I go then?" Rictor asks. "You said they can track us?"

"They can track you, yes," Shatterstar says. "They have not been able to track me for many years. Just keep driving. We need to get away from populated areas, minimise civilian casualties when we battle them again."

"Yeah, that's right," Rictor agrees, sounding a bit more cheerful now that there's some semblance of a plan, even a terrible one. "That's why I couldn't use my powers, you know, I didn't want to bring the house down on my family."

"Indeed." He'd assumed as much.

"We'll get them out into the countryside, and then I'll open up a ravine, drop them all inside, and close it up again. Mojo pancakes."

He laughs, and in truth his bloodthirstiness is not unpleasing to Shatterstar, who finds himself grinning. Or maybe it's just being near him again.

"That's where they're from, right?" Rictor asks. "Mojoworld? I recognise them from when Shatterstar first arrived, a bunch of them attacked the X-Mansion."

Shatterstar flinches a little at the mention of his name, and it doesn't go unnoticed.

"Is that where you're from too?" Rictor presses. "You look a little like him, you know, if you weren't so old. And that corny line from an 80s movie, that's exactly the sort of thing he'd say. He watches so much bad TV."

Shatterstar smiles. "Yes," he agrees. "That's where I'm from too."

"I thought so," Rictor says. "You even have the same brand. Though yours is black and his is red. Were you in the rebellion too? Did you know him?"

"I need to sleep," Shatterstar says, not knowing how to answer any of these questions. The canon is greatly contradictory on how much interference a timeline can take before it collapses, or fractures off into an alternate universe. He can't take the chance. And it's not even a lie; he's exhausted.

Rictor frowns, disappointed, but Shatterstar ignores him, closing his eyes. "I need to be at full charge when the rest of the Imperial Protectorate arrives," he says. "We can talk after that."

"All right, _amigo_ ," Rictor agrees. And then, as Shatterstar drifts off he hears, almost too softly to catch, "I just miss him, you know? He was a really good friend."

* * *

When he wakes up they're in what looks like an abandoned farm building, but obviously acts as a cache for the Richter gun running business. There are rusted pieces of what are presumably agricultural implements scattered around, but there's also a suspiciously well maintained trapdoor in the floor, and a pile of automatic weapons and boxes of cartridges dumped beside it.

"Did you _carry_ me in here?" he demands, shocked to the core that he could sleep through being touched, let alone lifted out of the car and lugged around, before being arranged semi-comfortably on a filthy old mattress and covered in an equally dusty blanket.

Rictor snorts. "You're light as a bird, man. Must be those hollow bones, eh? You have those in common with him as well."

"I suppose so," Shatterstar concedes. Perhaps it's just the decade long familiarity with Rictor that let him sleep through it all, rather than some catastrophic loss of warrior ability.

He stands up and dusts himself off, noticing with a start that his swords are missing.

"Where are they?" he demands, feeling a momentary flash of panic, Rictor or no.

Rictor laughs. "Right here," he says, gesturing at the pile of weapons.

Sure enough, the swords are there with the guns.

"How did you-" he starts, but Rictor interrupts him by laughing again.

"They're really nice," he says. "Much nicer than your old ones."

'What?"

"Oh, come on," Rictor says. "Did you really think I wouldn't recognise you?"

"Julio," Shatterstar protests weakly.

"See!" Rictor insists. "You're the only person apart from my mother who calls me that! I knew it was you!"

" _When?_ "

"Well, not right away," Rictor admits. "But I kinda had my mind focused on other things, you know? But after, in the car. When you were sleeping."

Shatterstar nods wonderingly. Of course Rictor would know him anywhere and anywhen, just as he, in turn, would know _him_. It was a fool's errand to pretend otherwise.

"I mean." Rictor flushes scarlet. "Not that I was watching you sleep or anything creepy like that."

"It's all right, Julio."

"No, it's not. That's one of the things I was trying to explain to you. To him. To you, I guess, whatever. Back in New York."

"I remember," Shatterstar agrees, and he does. Rictor had gone to considerable pains to explain acceptable human behaviour to him, for all the good it had done. In fairness, he had been as confused as Shatterstar in some respects, and hadn't had the excuse of being from a literal different dimension.

"Right," Rictor agrees. "So where are you from, anyway? Or when, I guess?"

"Twelve years in your future," he admits, since there's no point in further dissembling.

"And we're still good friends?"

"Yes, Julio. We're still very good friends."

"That's good." Rictor sounds sad. "I meant it, you know, I really miss him. You. Whatever."

"Then why did you leave?" Shatterstar asks. It's a question he eventually figured out the answer to, but he can't risk Rictor, now, not realising in time.

Rictor glares at him, and how he's missed that sulky, teenage face. They don't argue much anymore, after everything, but Julio usually just looks tired now, when they do.

"You know why," he snaps. "Things were getting weird. Everyone was talking about us."

"What were they saying?"

"You know what they were saying!" Rictor shouts. "I asked you a hundred times to stop acting like such a freak."

"I know _now_ , Julio," Shatterstar says, keeping a careful rein on his own temper. "I had no idea at the time. And you know perfectly well I had no frame of reference for what you found fault with in my behaviour. No one on Mojoworld had relationships the way you do on Earth. I barely understood the concept of friendship, let alone sex or love."

"I know," Rictor says quietly, sadly. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"And when I began to," Shatterstar goes on, "I certainly didn't understand what you were trying to tell me about the _rules_ for who was an acceptable target for one's affections, or that those rules might differ depending on where we were, or who was around us to see. You told me I would know it when I fell in love, and I _did_."

" _In love?_ "

"Yes, Julio, I-"

And then the sound of a portal opening puts an end to the conversation, and they wordlessly pick up their weapons and head outside together to face the oncoming hordes.

* * *

In the end it's pathetically easy to defeat the dog soldiers, and eventually new waves stop coming, as Mojo presumably realises that ratings are slipping, or perhaps, worse, that the audience is cheering the wrong side.

Shatterstar hasn't forgotten the thought of Mojo watching his confusion and despair, and he decides to give the Spineless Ones a preview of upcoming attractions before he and Rictor head to Mojoworld to send them and all their kind to final cancellation.

"Julio," he says.

"Yes?"

Rictor leans in closer, flushed and flashing eyed and desperately beautiful.

Shatterstar takes his face gently in both hands, and waits for one eternal moment for him to tell him to stop.

Rictor just closes his eyes.

Shatterstar pulls him closer and kisses him gently, then harder when Julio doesn't pull away. Julio's mouth opens under his, and the kiss deepens, and for a fraction of a second he can hear the audience cheer over the rushing of his blood and the racing of Julio's heart, before the channel slams shut.

"Wow," Rictor says, and he sounds a little dazed. Shatterstar refrains from congratulating himself, as it is, technically, their first kiss from Julio's perspective.

"So we're together in the future?" he asks at last. "Properly together?"

"Yes," Shatterstar says. "Properly together. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get back there. We were interrupted at a most inopportune time."

Julio blushes, and it is as delightful as ever. " _Really?_ "

"Really. And if I recall the original timeline correctly, my younger self is in somewhat desperate straits, and would very much appreciate _your_ return, also. Please visualise New York, and the Shatterstar of your acquaintance."

"All right," Rictor agrees, and the smile on his face is radiant.

* * *

The jump is simplicity itself, though this Julio has never acted as an anchor before, and they materialise in the woods outside the X-Mansion in Westchester. They're far enough from the house that no one should have seen the light, but the odds are good that they've tripped an alarm and someone will soon come to investigate. Rictor's speedy appearance in the open should allay even the most paranoid of their teammates' concerns, but Shatterstar will need to conceal himself somewhere until he's sufficiently recharged to make the leap forward in time.

Julio seizes his arm as he begins to make his goodbyes.

"What do I do?" he asks, the bravado of youth replaced by its ever underlying uncertainty. "What do I say to him?"

Shatterstar smiles. Truly, he remembers nothing that Julio said to him when he returned, only the soul deep joy that he had. 

"I don't believe it matters," he says, and if it's cheating to apply some of the wisdom acquired with time, it's the sort of cheating that authorities as venerable as Spock himself have endorsed. "Just be honest, difficult though it may be, about your needs, and be patient, also, when he struggles in turn."

Julio nods. "I'll try," he says. "Thank you. For everything."

There are footsteps approaching, and Shatterstar steps back into the shadow of the trees as Julio moves towards them.

" _Julio?_ " his younger self demands, incredulity clear in his voice, and Shatterstar smiles at how young he sounds, how heavy the Cadre accent he hasn't had time yet to lose.

"It's me, _amigo_ ," Julio agrees. "I told you I'd come back."

"Julio!" young Shatterstar repeats, and dropping his swords he throws himself at Rictor, sweeping him into a fervent embrace.

They hug for a long moment, then Shatterstar steps back, mortified. 

"I'm sorry, Julio," he says, and the flush of scarlet across his pale face is visible even in the gloom. "I shouldn't have-"

"No, _I'm_ sorry, Star," Julio says. "Come back here."

He cautiously approaches again. Up close he looks a mess to Shatterstar's critical eye, long hair lank and lifeless, loosely caught into a ponytail at his nape instead of swept up and neatly braided. 

Julio doesn't seem to notice. He stands on tiptoe to get the height he needs, and wraps his arms around Shatterstar's neck, pulling him in close. 

"When we're alone together, it's okay," he whispers, and leans in to gently kiss him.

Shatterstar turns away to give them the privacy they deserve for their actual first kiss. It's a start, and they have all the time in the world to sort the rest out. 

For himself, he has his own Julio, who no longer cares what _anyone_ else thinks, waiting at home for him. He'll have to make one more jump alone, but there's no stronger anchor in the universe than that.


End file.
